Cryme Tyme
In late 2006, WWE promoted The Gang Stars to the main Raw brand roster, starting by having them work live events and dark matches. On the September 4 episode of Raw, vignettes began airing to promote the debut of the team, now dubbed Cryme Tyme, showing them "training" for their pending debut on the show. The vignettes, which aired weekly, featured Cryme Tyme robbing people while an (overly and stereotypically uncool sounding) announcer dubbed their actions "training exercises" designed to work on things like "speed", "agility", "drive", "endurance", and "intensity". Cryme Tyme wrestled as fan favorites at live events and in dark matches, finally making their television debut, defeating Johnny and Mikey of the Spirit Squad on the October 16 episode of Raw. After arriving on Raw they were depicted covertly stealing things—such as Jerry Lawler's laptop, and a plasma screen TV—during interviews and while celebrating wins with the announce team. On November 5, the team made their pay-per-view debut at Cyber Sunday, defeating Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch, The Highlanders (Rory and Robbie McAllister), and Charlie Haas and Viscera in a four team tornado tag team match. Later that same month they were featured in a Raw segment that parodied Michael Richards's "Laugh Factory incident". In the skit, a wrestler (Nick Berk)—acting as a stand in for Richards—recreated the scene of the incident by using racial slurs and insults until Cryme Tyme confronted him on stage. Nervous, he offered an apology, but Gaspard kicked him in the head and JTG made a Seinfeld-esque joke, saying "What's the deal with the Bloods and the Crips? Can't they all just get along?". This event was the beginning of a series of vignettes and skits featuring Cryme Tyme interacting with different, unexpected audiences. Around the same time they began a feud with The World's Greatest Tag Team (Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas), during which Benjamin began to express disgust with Cryme Tyme's antics, calling them offensive and harmful to the black community. During the storyline Haas started "acting black", but after the World's Greatest Tag Team handed Cryme Tyme their first loss on the January 29, 2007 episode of Raw, the program was dropped, with Cryme Tyme appearing mainly on Raw's sister show Heat, only appearing on Raw in backstage segments. On July 21, 2007, Cryme Tyme appeared at an Ohio Valley Wrestling event and wrestled the OVW Southern Tag Team Champion James Boys (K.C. and Kassidy James), taking the title. At the next weeks television tapings the James Boys were again announced as Champions, with no explanation of how they won the title back being offered. The duo returned to Raw in July and started a gimmick where they would take items and auction them off to the crowd. This led to a feud with the World Tag Team Champions Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch, but both JTG and Shad were released from their WWE contracts for undisclosed reasons on September 2, 2007 before the feud was resolved. JTG and Shad returned to WWE under the "Cryme Tyme" name on the March 31 edition of Raw in 2008, defeating Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch. Cryme Tyme began working with John Cena on the June 30 edition of Raw when they helped him interfere during John "Bradshaw" Layfield's match. The following week, they again appeared together in a segment when they vandalized JBL's limo. After a live event match, Cena confirmed that they had created a faction and announced that it was called CTC or "Cryme Tyme Cenation". Separately, Cryme Tyme started a feud with the World Tag Team Champions Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase, stealing their championship belts for a time, then losing a title match to them at Unforgiven. The CTC quietly separated after Cena's injury. On April 15, 2009, Cryme Tyme were drafted to the SmackDown brand as part of the 2009 Supplemental Draft. Eve Torres later became their manager, accompanying them to the ring and appearing in backstage segments with them. On the July 31 episode of SmackDown, they became the number one contenders to the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship by defeating The Hart Dynasty, which they failed to win at SummerSlam. Cryme Tyme was supposed to compete for Team SmackDown at WWE Bragging Rights. However, due to health concerns regarding Gaspard, Cryme Tyme (along with most of the SmackDown team) was replaced by Matt Hardy, R-Truth, The Hart Dynasty and Finlay.They finally won another match after defeating Dolph Ziggler and Mike Knox on WWE Superstars. Category:Tag Teams